The present invention relates to a machine for industrial use, suited to peel citrus fruits and particularly oranges, so that they can be subsequently employed to make fruit salads, confectionery products, ice-creams or other food products.
At the present state of the art, there exist various manual and semiautomatic devices designed for peeling prevalently oranges.
None of the traditional devices provides for an automatic process, from fruit loading up to the final processing step, nor successive processing stations or the possibility to work simultaneously on more rows (lines).
Moreover, each of the known machines requires the presence of an operator, and the productivity is limited to only some oranges per hour due to the fact that in addition to the peel itself it is necessary to remove the white partxe2x80x94or mesocarpxe2x80x94as well, which is located below the peel. This low productivity has a great impact on costs and limits the offer of the peeled product.
It should be added that that the fragmentation and mistreatment of the peel renders its utilization laborious and expensive, since, in fact, the peel also has various uses. The extraction of essential oils from the peels has applications in perfumeries, in the production of liquors, and in pharmaceutics.
A main object, although not the only one, of the present invention, is to automate the peeling operations, not only of oranges, but of the whole variety of citrus fruits and of any fruits and vegetables having analogous characteristics with regard to peeling. A further object consists in the automation of the reading/detection of the thickness of the peel and the underlying mesocarp to be removed, and in the automatic adjustment of the machine for carrying out this removal; the intervention of a skilled operator, who treats fruits one by one, is no more necessary.
Still a further object is to realize a machine with a high productivity, which may include several peeling rows (lines), and that always requires the presence of a single operator for its operation.
A further feature is that the removed skin is not fragmented but forms a single spiral that facilitates its use by the respective industries.
Still a further object of the invention is to realize a peeling machine for citrus fruits, that may be simply and economically constructed, and that does not require qualified people.
These and other objects are attained by the machine of the present invention, which comprises several work stations, in which successive processing operations are performed, starting from the loading of each fruit, followed by the detection of the thickness of the peel and mesocarp to be removed, up to the peeling, and finally the end-cutting and release of the peeled fruit; the machine being characterized in that it includes a feeder, actuated by an intermittent device that causes its advancement in synchronism with the other parts of the machine; a manipulator, including pliers, that grasp and take the fruit from the feeder and displace it to a predetermined position; a rotatable turntable with horizontal axis, including four stations, said turntable grasping and retaining the fruit in the first station, and rotating it thereafter step by step towards the following stations; four mechanisms, one for each respective station, and having each a specific function, that is, to grasp and retain the fruit, to detect and assign a numeric value to the fruit diameter and to the thickness of the fruit and mesocarp, to peel the fruit, to cut the fruit at its ends (end-cutting) corresponding to the seizing regions, to separately release the peel and the peeled fruit already cut at its end regions; the machine being further provided with a mechanism that brings about the intermittent motion, and with connection means between the various mechanisms.